Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 20, 2012

EVE Character report (with titans)

Quick note: yesterday I met the worst scammer ever, and made an extra post about it which just hit 10K visitors!

My first character report was a month ago, from now on I will post such report every month, around the 20. day. I hope my plans help you make yours. And that your comments help me refine mine. If not, move along, nothing to see here. I try to use a simple format that can be copy-pasted and updated. First an overview table, then detailed description of characters. Unused characters are ignored.

Char#

Personal data

Account#

Implants

June SP

July SP

Remap

Last month focus

1

Gevlon Goblin

1

4

6.4

6.82

P7-W7

Accounting 5 (+cry on remap)

2

Hek trader

1

3

1.0

1.04

C4-W10

No training, busy trading

3

Scout/cyno pilot

1

3 +booster

-

1.38

P10-W4, later I10-M4

Caldari frig 5, later support

4

Amarr trader

2

4

2.2

2.33

C5-W4-M5

Accounting 5

5

Dodixie trader

2

4

1.6

2.37

C8-W6

Accounting 5

6

Rens trader

2

4

1.6

2.37

C8-W6

Accounting 5

7

Logi/Triage pilot

3

5

4.5

6.42

I10-M4

Support skills

8

Rorqual pilot

4

5

0.8

2.69

I10-M4

Support skills

9

Ragnarok pilot

5

5

0.3

2.15

I10-M4

Cybernetics 5, support skills

10

Nyx pilot for sale

6

5

-

1.78

I10-M4

Cybernetics 5, support skills

11

Avatar pilot

7

5+booster

-

1.29

I10-M4

Cybernetics 5, support skills

12

Girlfriends' character

8

4

6.1

7.90

P10-W4

Gallente BS, gunnery

Total SP of my characters (not counting Nyx for sale and girlfirend of course) in June: 18.4. In July: 28.9. I gained 10.5M SP in a month. So the statement that "latecomer can never catch up" is not true. No one can learn rank 6 skills, more skillpoints mean ability to fulfill more roles, to fly more ships. That can also be achieved by different accounts. Accounts can be paid with PLEX you get for playing well. So no, a good playing new player can easily outperform a mediocre veteran.

My main, Gevlon Goblin. My training was erratic at start, since I assumed I'll make money with Industry skills. Then I made a remap to perception-willpower too early. Lesson to learn: don't remap your first char in the first three months. No matter how much you read, no matter how smart you are, this game is too complex to make a plan with that knowledge. I'm currently locked in my P-W remap and have to deal with it. Like learning Accounting 5 in that remap. I'll learn the skills for the ships I'll use in rest of my (foreseeable) life: a Basilisk with logi 4, a Charon, a blockade runner, an Orca which I'm already flying and a stealth bomber to fly lowsec. My future is clear: Jita will be my home and Science and Trade Institution my corp till the end of days. I'll make ISK for nullsec ventures. After I finished the ships, I'll remap for more trade skills.

This pilot practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory and does only trading. Future plans: finishing trade skills (Accounting 5 is missing among many other 5s). Then learning research skills to work with the agents to trigger storylines and some passive income from datacores.

She is my first nullsec pilot, her job is to scout for the rest pilots, do exploration and open cyno if needed.

She trades in Amarr and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.

She trades in Dodixie and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.

She trades in Rens and ran my planets. I switched them off, because I am cutting back my moneymaking. She'll learn to fly an Orca, as a fallback if my haulers would go on vacation.

This pilot will be the first to move null/WH. Soon flying a logi (type depending on alliance fleet), then train for an archon triage carrier. Will perfect these skills, won't learn any more new ships

While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, learning of Int/Mem, then my ships: the Rorqual the freighter and the jump freighter. After these comes Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. It is followed by industrial skills, needed to compress ore. After this I learn all relevant skills to 5.

This pilot has long way before flying anything but a shuttle. 101 days of Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills, then I learn skirmish warfare support and fleet command. Then Perc/Will almost forever for Minmatar Titan 5. Unfortunately I'll have to have guns which is even more skills.

To experiment with Character Bazaar, I started training a Nyx pilot. We'll see how much profit this sale will provide

My second titan pilot. Originally planned as Avatar, but since I know more about how fleet boosting goes, he'll either be sold or turned into Dreadnaught pilot. (OK dreads have guns). Capital fleets are usually armor-tanked, right?

On the top of my own accounts, I give a PLEX a month to my girlfriend, as it would be stupid to pay for it with real money. She is still extremely casual. She minds her training queue and sometimes run some random mission but that's it. I hope she'll like the game more when she sees nullsec on my monitor. She is great player when involved in a game, so if she'll get the taste, she'll be a great addition to the same alliance I'll go.

I want to talk about a central part of my nullsec plans, the titans. I posted several titan plans, mostly replied with various disagreement, yet until I asked for explicit theorycraft I got some useful answers. Let me share it. Providing a boost to a fleet is a huge positive, you won't find a fleet without a booster. Who shall give it? Gang assist modules have 5000 CPU requirement, making them unfittable to ships except for ones designed for them. The commonly used are command ships and T3 cruisers. These ships get a faction boost for one group of gang links. For example the Vulture provides 15% bonus to siege warfare links with perfect skills. A Tengu with the proper subsystem provides 25% bonus. A titan can't give that.

There are 4 groups of combat links, each contain 4 boosts, 3 provided by the modules, 1 provided by an implant called "mindlink":

For a supercapital fleet the best would be having +37.5% HP for the primary tank (shield in a shield fleet), +37.5 capacitor recharge, 3 links for their primary tank, resist link for the secondary tank (armor for a shield-tanked fleet), rapid deployment link, 3 mindlinks: 1 for increasing the 3 tank links, 1 for secondary tank HP (with resist from link and damage control that's another 0.5-1M EHP/ship) and +15% targetting range or +15% agility. These can be provided by an Erebus/Leviathan, an Avatar and a T3 booster ship in booster positions. The titans need no links, they can fully provide their unique boosts without them and can use the mindlink implant, all 5 links can be on the T3. This is why my link-titans were laughed at.

Now meet my Ragnarok:

Wait! Didn't I just say that links on titans are bad? Indeed they are, but this titan doesn't belong to the supercap fleet. I mean it warps with them, stays with them, on the comms with them, following orders of the supercap FC. However it's in the supporting subcap fleet, in fleet booster position. Alternatively it arrives alone with the subcaps, this case several ships of the fleet have cyno fitted for obvious reasons. This is the shield fleet boost version, if the fleet is armor, it has 3 armor links, 1 shield and Armored warfare mindlink.

9 subcaps definitely don't deserve a T3 squad booster (a 10th combat ship is better), so they can only have fleet and wing booster. This titan is providing them the -37.5% signature radius, the primary tank and the passive on the secondary tank. The wing boosting T3 is providing the Skirmish and EWAR links. A Scimitar has 65m signature. With a Skirmish mindlink Loki as wing booster, this decreases to 42m. Enters my Ragnarok as fleet booster and it goes down to 26m! Who wants his logis be harder to hit than Rifters (35m unbuffed)? Who wants his drakes be as hard to hit as a destroyer? Any interceptor wanna try out how it feels to be smaller than a pod? You may say that the stacking of Ragnarok bonus and Skirmish link bonus are not intended, but it makes no sense as the Ragnarok bonus is useless to supercaps and alone barely better than the Loki bonus. No, no! It's the well deserved reward of those who are bold enough to drop a titan in a subcap battle.

The "Gevlon seeks nullsec place" saga is about to end. By next week Friday, I'll be in a nullsec corp, one way or another. You won't be disappointed by my plans. You guessed, it won't be "join noname_pet#24 in its epic quest to get sov for carebearing".

Thursday morning report: 110.2B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

21 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Get your GF into a fun casual Corp like RvB .. much fun if you log in only casual .. You can get fights in 5 mins and you learn a lot abotu the game in a short period of time without much boring waiting downtimes ...

you might as well leave it untanked in that case, since the neuts will otherwise.

neither do you double tank them, fit cap boosters or an afterburner.

you're better of running remote SEBO's to support locking on the bigger ships in your fleet, webs, points, remote tracking enhancersand a deadspace 100mn micro to help a slight bit with warping if you fancy giving up the mid slot

if your shield tanking though...ive got no clue what to do with the slots, their usually reserved for damage/tracking but you have no guns...so you probably might as well dual tank the shield fit then

cap battery for neut resists is arguably usefull, but not reallyremember you're not running your doomsday, jump and smartbombs constantly, you can tick them offline in EFT to see how cap stable you are (not that that matters to much, plenty of spare cap transfers in a fleet)

and i'd switch a smartbomb for a cloakwhen you get neuted below jumping cap and you're gona need to warp off to a safe and cloak up to recharge

Cloak is a good idea but not having tank sounds like a really bad one. Why should one give up on resists? Because of neuters? That's why the capacitor boosters/rechargers are and also cap transfer from friendlies. I understand that the standard protocol of killing a ratting/bumped out titan is neuting it and then shooting, but with subcap support I seriously doubt that the Bhaalghorns live long enough to cycle twice.

with perfect skills and the 123750 that this fit provides you need 86625 capacitor to jump with it.which leaves you with 37125 capacitor. With the horrible reload AND your capacitor boosters that gives you a reload of 199 seconds till you are able to jump again IF you don't use any capacitor at all, and are not neutralized.

Now you cannot rely on remote cap boost being available all the time - in fact, in a laggy situation like lets say a fleet fight, even with remote cap boosters on the field (unlikely) you might only receive a few cycles at the start.

If you move more than one jump usually you do not regain up to 100% cap, but you regain to be jumpable again, which might leave you hopping in a bad situation with even less cap - but even if you end up there with 37125 cap - those can be neuted out quite fast, and two cap boosters counter roughly one cap neutralizer (if the ship has bonuses on that).

the purpose of the neuting of a titan is to keep it from being able to jump, it losing its resistances would be a nice bonus.

going full-passive means that you might simply live a bit longer.

Besides neuting is not limited to Bhaalgorns, infact when killing a titan its not a bad idea to combat refit carriers to neutralize.

@Anonymous: you seem to not have used titans yet. Switching off modules to see if it is cap stable is bullshit - with a titan you are not interested in cap stable, you are interested in shortest amount possible to be clear for jumping.

a) All Mindlinks are the same slot.b) Bonus applies to ships in same fleet and solar system.c) Titans and Stargates. Not happening, so you need to cyno every jump while roaming. Gonna cost a lot of ships and firepower if you don't hot drop it or use it as a jump bridge. (e.g. 3, 4 or 5 cynos, where's the balance between boost and just bringing those ships as firepower?)d) Boosters don't need command skill unless they're in a command position.e) Only the highest boost is applied when there are duplicates.f) Bonuses only affect the players at the level at which they are generated or lower.

Alright, you need a bit of help with those fits, and I'll explain the problems as clearly as I can.

Firstly the armor fit:

* On a titan you should fit an officer smartbomb, not a faction one. This is important as you need the additional range, and as the titan costs 100b+ the price is easily justified. Sometimes it's also good to fit an officer neut and an officer smartbomb instead of two smartbombs. A neut is used to deal with lone HICS, as if you time it just right they will drop point for a few seconds, allowing you to escape.

* The two heavy capacitor boosters are a questionable choice. While they will let you run your shield tank forever, that's all they'll do. They will not make any serious contribution to your cap recharge time for jumping, or let you fire your DD.

* The afterburner is another questionable choice, and I am wondering if you put it on because you saw MWDs on other titan fits. The purpose of the MWD on a titan is to get into warp faster, by momentarily increasing your inertia, aligning, then when the MWD cycles you will be able to warp. An afterburner will do this too, but less effectively. If you are worried about the cap % loss, don't be. A titan will never run out of cap unless it's being neuted. Jump charge up time is the same with and without the 25% reduction.

* The doomsday could go either way. On the one hand it is a titan's most powerful weapon, but on the other you explicitly say this titan fit is to support subcaps. In that situation you won't be coming up against other capitals, and so won't be able to use it. A cloak is a much better choice for that slot because it's your only method of escape from hostile territory. If the subcap battle is going to shit, you warp off and cloak up. If you do this early enough you will save the titan. If you do get tackled and manage to escape, the cloak will prevent you being retackled within 5 seconds (remember the probing ships can warp about 5 times faster than you). The cloak is the best defence you have.

* Regarding the shield tank. Typically it's a bad idea to dual tank ships, because those slots could be much better used for something combat related. There are no armor tank modules you can fit in those mid slots, and you clearly don't need combat mods as you are a boosting fit, so that leaves one obvious choice: cap rechargers. You should entirely replace your shield tank with them. The shield tank won't add much to your survivability, whereas a bunch of cap rechargers will.

Now the shield fit:

* While it is important to be able to cap up fast, that is a secondary priority to tank. You have fit cap mods in your low slots that could alternately be used to improve your shield tank with power diagnostic systems. When you need to travel, have a supporting carrier come nearby to do a combat refit. When in combat, fit power diagnostics.

Those comments about the fits aside, there are a few serious issues here regarding the use of a titan in the way you imagine. As another commenter has mentioned, only the highest boost is used if there are duplicates, which severely limits the usefulness of a titan booster. Secondly, the issue with titans is mobility, they are not able to move between systems as fast as a subcap fleet needs to (even a defensive one) which makes a loki booster preferable. Typically if a boosting titan is used it is always sat in a POS. If you are invading enemy space you put up a staging POS, and then your boosting titan can live in there. If you are defending your own space the titan just sits in any POS that's empty (SAFELY fitting multiple titans into a single tower is a logistical challenge to say the least). While in theory titans are great boosters, in practice it is only done defensively due to the huge risk of loss (remember the risk is to morale, not to anybody's wallet). These days titans are used only as Chuck Norris style anti-capital ships that turn up and doomsday everything smaller than a super and bigger than a carrier. In the past they were used extensively against subcaps too (e.g. in the goons vs raiden war), but due to extreme complaining the goons managed to get an emergency nerf in the next patch, which enabled their drake blobs to triumph over raiden's supers/titans.

@Anonymous: thanks for the detailed help. If you check back the post, my shield titan was upgraded as you suggested and the armor disappeared. Simply the shield had 2.5x more EHP, so it's better even in an armor tanked subcap fleet. If the enemy drops supers and ours counterdrop, I'm sure that they won't focus on the only titan that's NOT shooting them.

I removed the doom however I'd ask if it can be combat-refitted? So if the subcap battle is won and we start destroying the structure, I can replace something to put on the doom and shoot the structure too.

The subcap fleets needs boosts in all fields: information, skirmish and tank. This is usually handled by fleet and wing booster T3s. The boosts don't overlap as we all give different links: tank + offtank resist from me, information and skirmish from wing T3. What the fleet loses is the +3 extra cycle speed of reppers and +6% resists (on a naked ship) as a Tengu would have bonus. What they gain is extra -37.5% sig radius.

I think it's the best way a titan can contribute to a subcap fleet and I'm determined to somehow meaningfully contribute in the existing battles which are unfortunately no-super ones.

In response to your question, yes, a doomsday can be refit during combat, HOWEVER it's 8000m3, and regular capital mods are about 4000m3, which means in practice you don't carry every combination of capital fits you can due to cargo limitations (though you do carry every combination of tank and cap mods you can, including neuts, smartbombs, target painters, etc). This is true for carriers as well.

One more minor point: All supercap pilots fly with implant sets designed to boost HP. For armor, this is the "slave set" and the hull upgrades hardwiring, which together contribute an extra 20-30% total HP. I don't know what the equivalent is for shield supers, but you should find out and add it to EFT to get a more accurate reading of total EHP.

@Anonymous: thanks for the further tips, the implants are added. Unfortunately there is no slave set for shield, found a +5% HP, +5% recharge and 5% cap size, 5% cap recharge implants.

Since I won't be carrying around too many fits (no guns) the doom will fit in. The shield tanked ship needs no cap boosters. Also, I can just grab an Orca to follow me around during traveling with 100K m3 cargo.

Notes: This weapon can only fire on ships that are capital-sized or larger. After firing, you will be immobile for thirty seconds and will be unable to activate your jump drive or cloaking device for ten minutes.